How to Make Beef Stew – Beef Stew Recipe Using a Pressure Cooker

This amazingly easy beef stew pressure cooker recipe stew will save you over 2.5 hours in cook time when compared to a beef stew crock pot recipe! This is one of our favorite quick and easy dinner recipes. I am getting hungry just writing about it.

“Talk of joy: there may be things better than beef stew and baked potatoes and home-made bread – there may be.” – David Gayson, American Journalist, 1870-1946

More than just a delicious and hearty combination of ingredients, homemade beef stew brings back memories of family and my childhood. There we were standing in line next to the slow cooker, bowl in hand, eagerly awaiting mother’s declaration that it’s ready. Outside snow drifts against the doorway and we hoped, we prayed, that the wind would keep blowing and the snow would keep falling, piling, drifting just deep enough to cancel school in the morning….

How to Make Beef Stew

What follows is a tried-and-true traditional complete yet completely adaptable pressure cooker beef stew recipe that in our opinion is better in 30 minutes than what used to take over 3 hours following a beef stew crock pot recipe.. If you have kids, call them in to help wash the vegetables. If you have a spouse or companion, get them in the kitchen to help cut up the meat or brown the onions. There’s only one thing that could make this recipe better, and that’s involving those special people around you. Call everyone in from the mine, wash’em up, sit’em down. Let’s eat.

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go;
I owe my soul to the company store.

Directions

Prepare the vegetables by washing (we leave them unpeeled) and cubing or slicing to the desired thickness.

chopped fresh vegetables

To prep the beef for browning begin by defrosting the meat (if necessary) and cutting about 1-inch size pieces. Prepare a ziploc bag with flour, salt, and pepper adding the meat and shaking until coated.

Add the oil to the pressure cooker and bring the heat to medium. Add the coated beef pieces when the oil is hot and cook until slightly brown on all sides. This will only take a minute or two.

When browned remove the meat and set it aside on a plate with a paper towel.

Cooked onions, time to deglaze

With the meat out of the way you now have plenty of room to cook the minced vegetables. Heat them until they are translucent and maybe a little browned, about 3 minutes. Next add a little bit of the beef broth to deglaze the pan, making sure to scrape up all the brown bits from the bottom as best you can. Of course you will leave these in… So delicious.

The pressure cooker indicated 15psi by releasing a small steady amount of steam.

Add the meat back to the pressure cooker, along with the rest of the broth and two cups of water. Top with bay leaf and the herbs.

Lock the pressure cooker lid in place, and set to high heat until 15 psi has been reached signified by a steady flow of steam from your pressure cooker regulator. When reached immediately lower the temperature to the lowest setting that will maintain pressure (for us that is medium-low) and start the timer for 12 minutes.

Pressure cooker steady steam

After 12 minutes use the quick release method to lower pressure without lowering the temperature of the food too much.
When the pressure cooker has signaled that it has depressurized and has allowed you to unlock it, open the lid carefully place it aside.

Add the rest of the ingredients: the larger pieces of potatoes, carrots, onions and celery.

Add the vegetables

Replace and lock the lid and bring the pressure cooker back to pressure on high heat. When 15psi has been reached, again lower the heat to maintain pressure. Cook for 4 minutes.

After 4 minutes turn off the heat entirely and allow the pressure cooker to cool using the natural release method – this takes about 10 minutes.

While this is cooling you can get everything cleaned up.

To thicken if needed: Mix 2 tablespoons flour with some water and more salt and pepper in a separate measuring cup or bowl. Wisk in this mixture in to thicken the broth. You can then let the pot simmer for a little while to thicken further, or add more flour/water mixture as needed.

And there you have it. Delicious, hearty, and soul warming easy beef stew made in 30 minutes.

Delicious easy beef stew

Makes enough for 6 bowls.

Time saved by using a pressure cooker: 2.5 hours

Learn more about the history of stew, including what primitive tribes used to boil as a prelude to mating rituals on Wikipedia’s Beef Stew page.

Thanks for reading.

"I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate." ~Julia Child

Why learn pressure cooking?
It's 7 pm. The end of the work day stomach rumbles...

In one hand, a take out menu. In the other hand, the refrigerator door...its contents staring back almost as blankly as we are towards them. We want a homemade meal, but also want something quick and simple to make.
1. Simple and quick recipes requiring basic skills to become proficient in the kitchen.
2. Quality ingredients, not necessarily 100% organic, but meals without artificials and chemistry class additives.
3. To understand more of the story of our food and take small steps towards self-reliance.
It's true, there are many benefits to pressure cooking: the time savings, the taste, a small step towards self-reliance, sustainability... but the real benefit is in what we learn as we redefine our relationship with food. Good food can be fast. Good food can be easy.

Thanks for your comment Rick. We absolutely love this recipe and you are right about the flavors from the veggies and meat. It just doesn’t get much better. Strangely looking forward to a snowy winter with lots of hot beef stew.

Thanks for the recipe. I had never used a pressure cooker before, but owned one. I decided to try this recipe as my first attempt at pressure cooking. My cooker does not have a quick release, and I didn’t have any carrots or celery so I used only stew meat, onions and potatoes. I simply turned off the heat after 12 minutes. The flavor was wonderful and I appreciate the easy to follow recipe. This turned out so great I’m looking for more recipes. Thank you!

I love your recipe. I hate onions however so I replaced them with garlic & added some red wine too. Oh and mushrooms too, as my husband loves them. Its on the last 4 minute cooking cycle now and it smells freaking fantabulous! Thanks for a great recipe, doll!

A great recipe but a little bit confusing because the picture and the words don’t match. The picture shows the medium-cut onions being fried, while the recipe specifies that the minced vegetables only should be fried and the medium-cut vegetables should be added to the stew for the 2nd round of pressure cooking.

When I read that I was to cook the stew for just four minutes, I thought it might be a misprint. However, I did just that and the stew came out great. Next time, I will use a bit less water as my Kuhn-Rikon doesn’t seem to lose much moisture while heating. The beef was so tender. I can’t wait to have leftovers!

This beef stew recipe took a little longer than the time mentioned. Plus my pressure cooker doesn’t have psi reading or cooling method. It did make a delicious stew as promised. I added minced garlic and can of tomato sauce at the end and it was amazing!!!! Just had to tweak it a little.

I happened to stumble on to your website while looking for a good beef stew recipe when I noticed the pressure cooker (in your photos) was the exact PC that I have & love (Yay). Other beef stew recipes use other PC, however, in my experience each PC cook time vary due to the variety. I followed your recipe cook time and it turned out perfect. Thank you very much for the step-by-step explicit photos and instructions.

I love this recipe, to add zing to it I use a half cup of balsamic vinegar and 1 1/2 water and add a good handful of fresh oregano instead of a bay leaf. Gives it a slight Mediterranean flavour. Matter of fact I’ve got one in the pot now

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